Speaker 1: Hello, Adlots listeners. We are re releasing an episode that
Speaker 1: we recorded on May twenty third with Zorin Mumdanie.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Just last night, Zoron won the Democratic nomination to be
Speaker 3: the new mayor of New York City. He is the
Speaker 3: massive favorite going into the general election, although of course
Speaker 3: Cuomo is the favorite going into the nomination, so anything
Speaker 3: could still happen. But probably a lot of people are
Speaker 3: tuning into this race now for the first time and
Speaker 3: want to know what the Democratic nominee is all about.
Speaker 1: Yep, and we asked him a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: exactly that, So take a listen.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, we might
Speaker 2: we had a socialist mayor here in New York City.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you something please? It's slightly weird. Last night,
Speaker 1: the night before we're recording this episode, I had a
Speaker 1: dream that I was in a shared uber with Adrian
Speaker 1: Adams and she was the driver. So she's another mayoral candidate.
Speaker 1: She was driving and I told her we were going
Speaker 1: to interview this particular candidate.
Speaker 2: And I was amazing.
Speaker 1: I was asking her for good questions.
Speaker 2: This is an amazing dream you're not making, Lissa.
Speaker 1: No, my dreams are very literal. And everyone in the
Speaker 1: uber was giving me ideas for questions and had opinions
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But now I can't remember any
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's really disappointing anyway. You know, we don't really
Speaker 3: cover a lot of New York City politics. We don't
Speaker 3: cover a lot of politics in general. We hardly ever
Speaker 3: talked about New York City politics. Who really cares about
Speaker 3: New York and the broad audience. We don't like to
Speaker 3: be too navel gazing, but you know, this is a
Speaker 3: city with a lot of people who, needless to say,
Speaker 3: work in finance. Potentially, if Door Maine your changes to
Speaker 3: tax rates here, et cetera, then that could have an
Speaker 3: impact on the industry that we cover a lot. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of economics stories that are sort of
Speaker 3: New York centric, particularly relating to housing, that are very universal,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So it's not a crime to every once
Speaker 3: in a while to a New York City focused episode.
Speaker 1: No, and this also relates directly to a previous all
Speaker 1: Balts episode we did all about how New York gets
Speaker 1: its groceries.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's the connection. Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to say we have a state assemblyman
Speaker 3: and candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor, Zoron, Mumdanie
Speaker 3: coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Zoron, Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3: I mentioned your socialist. What specific strand of socialism are you?
Speaker 3: And are the other socialists revisionists and deviationists of various flavors.
Speaker 3: We need to know your exact the exact category here.
Speaker 5: I will leave that to the internet. I will. I
Speaker 5: will tell you that I am a dem cutic socialist. Yes,
Speaker 5: and I started to call myself that after Bernie Sanders'
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen run for president, when I finally had a
Speaker 5: language described the way that I saw the world and
Speaker 5: the way that I believe the world should be, which
Speaker 5: is one where every person has the dignity they need
Speaker 5: to live a decent life.
Speaker 3: By the way, you know, now that I am a
Speaker 3: journalist at a mainstream news organization, I do not personally
Speaker 3: have political opinions, but I can say that I didn't.
Speaker 3: Wasn't always the case. And I went to high school
Speaker 3: in Vermont, and I was a volunteer on Bernie's nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six house campaign and wants a picture of me
Speaker 3: with Bernie. So I was a very early you too.
Speaker 3: I was a Bernard Brother before it became cool.
Speaker 5: Yes, you got in early.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So how would you describe your platform? Is it the
Speaker 1: New York version of Sanders.
Speaker 5: It's heavily inspired by that same focus on income inequality
Speaker 5: and a recognition of the fact that one in four
Speaker 5: New Yorkers are currently living in poverty in what has
Speaker 5: now been described as the most expensive city in the country.
Speaker 5: And it is a platform at its core to make
Speaker 5: this city affordable and to use every tool at city
Speaker 5: government's disposal to do so, because for too long we've
Speaker 5: had politicians pretend that we are just bystanders to a
Speaker 5: suffocating cost of living crisis, when in fact, we have
Speaker 5: two choices, whether to exacerbate it or put an end
Speaker 5: to it. And we've seen Eric Adams do the former.
Speaker 5: We're running to do the latter.
Speaker 3: What did Eric Adams do when you said he did
Speaker 3: the former, what did he do in your view to
Speaker 3: exacerbate it.
Speaker 5: You know, the first issue that you hear from most
Speaker 5: New Yorkers when it comes to cost of living is housing,
Speaker 5: and the mayor sets the rent increases for more than
Speaker 5: two million New Yorkers to live in rent stabilized housing.
Speaker 5: And he came in as a self described real estate
Speaker 5: That's how he described himself coming into the office. And
Speaker 5: he's raised rents accordingly. He's raised them more than nine percent.
Speaker 5: And this year, when the Rent Guidelines Board, which is
Speaker 5: entirely composed of his appointees, found that the landlords of
Speaker 5: those million or so units that have close to two
Speaker 5: and a half million tenants had seen a increase in
Speaker 5: their revenues by twelve percent, he wanted to raise the
Speaker 5: rent once again to close to eight percent. And that
Speaker 5: is one example. Another I would say is his relationship
Speaker 5: to Connetison. Connettison can only raise the rates of gas
Speaker 5: and electric with the permission of the state, and they
Speaker 5: do so through something called a rate case. The City
Speaker 5: of New York under Eric Adams administration sided with Walmart
Speaker 5: in support of Connetison's requests to raise those rates by
Speaker 5: sixty five dollars a month on average. And I know
Speaker 5: that because I was also a part of that rate case,
Speaker 5: one of the few elected officials who signed an opposition
Speaker 5: to it, And I think that you can see this
Speaker 5: again and again and again in the way that he
Speaker 5: has intervened in the major costs that are driving New
Speaker 5: Yorkers out of the city.
Speaker 1: So, since you mentioned housing and the rent freeze, you
Speaker 1: support rent freeze, lower rents. What do you say to
Speaker 1: people who think that you need to incentivize landlords to
Speaker 1: maintain their buildings to build new ones. There are also
Speaker 1: people out there who think that regulatory reform is the
Speaker 1: key to the supply problem in New York why rent
Speaker 1: freezes particularly versus you know, maybe lou some of the regulations.
Speaker 5: I think that many of these things can actually be
Speaker 5: achieved in tandem. I am both a candidate who believes
Speaker 5: we need to freeze the rent for rent stabilized tenants
Speaker 5: and one who believes that we need to end the
Speaker 5: requirement to build parking lots when reconstruct housing, who believes
Speaker 5: we need to increase densitery around mass transit hubs, that
Speaker 5: we need to upzone wealthier neighborhoods that have historically not
Speaker 5: contributed to affordable housing production. And we need to interrogate
Speaker 5: why Tokyo is building ten homes for every thousand people,
Speaker 5: Jersey cities at seven and New York is barely at four.
Speaker 5: And some of that also has to do with what
Speaker 5: is often described as the mundane details of housing law,
Speaker 5: but can have massive impacts on whether or not it's
Speaker 5: affordable or expensive to construct that housing, be it single
Speaker 5: staircase versus dual staircase, or the regulations that have effectively
Speaker 5: made it illegal to build SROs in this city, and
Speaker 5: the need for us to have a true diversity of
Speaker 5: housing stock. And I think the reason for the focus
Speaker 5: on our rent freeze is that that is the clearest
Speaker 5: and most direct way that you start your housing platform
Speaker 5: as the mayor of this city, given your appointing of
Speaker 5: all nine members of that Rent Guidelines Board. But it
Speaker 5: cannot be the extent of it, because a city of
Speaker 5: eight point four eight million people deserves a mayor with
Speaker 5: a housing platform for eight point four eight million people,
Speaker 5: not just the closest two and a half million that
Speaker 5: live in those units. And the other point I would
Speaker 5: make is that I have served in Albany, I'm now
Speaker 5: in my third term, and I've seen in Albany, while
Speaker 5: I have opposed it, we have passed legislation that allowed
Speaker 5: landlords to double the amount of money they can receive
Speaker 5: for iais, which are otherwise known as individual apartment improvements.
Speaker 5: So to your concern around incentivizing repairs and things of
Speaker 5: that nature, landlords have already just won the right to
Speaker 5: double the amount of money they can receive for those improvements.
Speaker 5: And I was in opposition to that doubling because of
Speaker 5: the immense amount of fraud that we've seen in that
Speaker 5: kind of program, where expenses are not actually what they
Speaker 5: are represented to be. And the final thing I would
Speaker 5: say is the rent guidelines had that findings of the
Speaker 5: twelve percent increase in revenue for those landlords. If there
Speaker 5: are landlords for whom that picture is not an accurate representation,
Speaker 5: there is a program where they can apply a hardship
Speaker 5: program for relief when they show that their income from
Speaker 5: rents is not matching up to their costs at a
Speaker 5: ratio that is allowing them to continue to operate that building.
Speaker 5: And that is a program that I will intend to
Speaker 5: continue to support because I believe it is important to
Speaker 5: ensure that we can keep all of these buildings in operation.
Speaker 3: I've heard that about Jersey City, that they've actually done
Speaker 3: a fairly good job of expanding housing supply. What is
Speaker 3: the role in your vision for more affordable housing for
Speaker 3: the private developers and the for profit developers and so forth,
Speaker 3: and you know, in your view, how can we actually
Speaker 3: move the dial in terms of housing production of we'll
Speaker 3: get into some of the stuff about I want to
Speaker 3: talk about the public housing too, or quote affordable housing,
Speaker 3: but for the private landlords, what can actually in your
Speaker 3: view move the dial on that.
Speaker 5: I think some of it has to do with the regulations.
Speaker 5: I was speaking of the fact that we continue to
Speaker 5: have this requirement to build parking and you build housing.
Speaker 5: That's not a requirement we should have any longer. The
Speaker 5: need for us to take advantage of our unique place
Speaker 5: in this country, and that we have mass transit hubs
Speaker 5: across the city and that should be a site of
Speaker 5: more housing density, and the fact that housing production has
Speaker 5: not been evenly distributed across this city, especially in wealthier neighborhoods.
Speaker 5: But I think even beyond that question of zoning, which
Speaker 5: is what a lot of this comes back to, there's
Speaker 5: also the question of process. We need to make it
Speaker 5: faster to build this housing and ensure that we don't
Speaker 5: see delay after delay after delay. And so one of
Speaker 5: the points of our housing plan is also to move
Speaker 5: away from the piecemeal process that is the one you
Speaker 5: can describe today as being where you have something known
Speaker 5: as member deference, where every city council member has the
Speaker 5: ultimate vote on whether or not a development goes up
Speaker 5: or down. We need to have a citywide approach, one
Speaker 5: that also fast tracks developments that are in line with
Speaker 5: the very priorities we've laid out with regards to housing production,
Speaker 5: labor standards, affordability, because it's been too long where we've
Speaker 5: seen proposals to build affordable housing for low income seniors
Speaker 5: languish for years in delays, and those delays all cost money,
Speaker 5: and that's also what drives up the cost of this production,
Speaker 5: and I think we need to streamline those processes.
Speaker 3: Actually, let's talk about that a little bit further. Because
Speaker 3: public housing, which you want to expand significantly, is very
Speaker 3: costly to build, and you know, there are certain standards
Speaker 3: of public housing. We expect it to last a very
Speaker 3: long time. There's priorities that it be carbon friendly, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But like public housing, production in New York City has
Speaker 3: been on parer cost wise, with even some very high
Speaker 3: end private construction. Hudson Yards on a per unit basis
Speaker 3: came in pretty similarly. This would be important regardless of
Speaker 3: how it's financed. How do you actually get the cost
Speaker 3: down in your view of public housing production.
Speaker 5: So the first thing I would do is just distinguish
Speaker 5: between what kind of housing we're speaking of when we
Speaker 5: say public housing, A lot of times we're referring to
Speaker 5: Nischa developments. Yeah, across the fire.
Speaker 2: That's when I said it. I was thinking Nische, Okay.
Speaker 5: Just to be clear, and I think that you know,
Speaker 5: what we've seen in Nischa is in many ways emblematic
Speaker 5: of a larger betrayal of working class New Yorkers. Nischa
Speaker 5: is technically underneath the auspices of the federal government, but
Speaker 5: the city and the state have an immense role to play,
Speaker 5: and we've seen over time, while the federal government has
Speaker 5: refused to fund the plan to put at least forty
Speaker 5: billion dollars towards Nischa to deal with an ever expanding
Speaker 5: amount of capital needs, the city since the time of Bloomberg,
Speaker 5: has started to narrow the amount of funding that it provides,
Speaker 5: and the state is not stepping up in the way
Speaker 5: that it should. Now in our housing plan, we propose
Speaker 5: doubling the amount of money we spend on preserving Nischa housing,
Speaker 5: because what we've seen is that, oftentimes it's easy to
Speaker 5: describe this housing crisis in New York City is solely
Speaker 5: of affordability, it's also a crisis of having a safe
Speaker 5: and habitable place to call your home. And as someone
Speaker 5: who represents the largest public housing development in North America,
Speaker 5: Queensbridge Houses, as well as the story of Houses Ravenswood Houses,
Speaker 5: I have seen so many of my constituents, seniors who
Speaker 5: are forced to walk up many flights of stairs because
Speaker 5: their elevator isn't working, who are waiting for months to
Speaker 5: have repairs be conducted, and who in a moment of
Speaker 5: housing crisis. Under Eric Adams, we've actually seen the time
Speaker 5: it takes to fill a vacant unit in Nische now
Speaker 5: exceed more than a year, which should be the easiest
Speaker 5: thing for city government to do.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about another plank of your platform
Speaker 1: that is of particular interest to us, and that is groceries.
Speaker 1: Of course, so a while ago, Joe and I recorded
Speaker 1: an episode on how New York actually gets its produce,
Speaker 1: and we learned about the importance of the Hunt's distribution
Speaker 1: terminal and all of that why grocery stores.
Speaker 5: You know, we are focused on the cost of living crisis,
Speaker 5: and when you ask New Yorkers whether they're making forty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 5: you will inevitably hear them speak about groceries and the
Speaker 5: sticker shock they feel in going back to the grocery
Speaker 5: store and their sense that that which they could afford
Speaker 5: years ago is now out of reach for them. And ultimately,
Speaker 5: groceries and food are a non negotiable part of being
Speaker 5: a New Yorker and living in any city in the world.
Speaker 5: You need to be able to afford it to build
Speaker 5: any kind of a life. And yet what we're seeing
Speaker 5: is that people are being priced out of produce. And
Speaker 5: when something is critically important to that dignity, I believe
Speaker 5: that there should be a public option for it. And
Speaker 5: what we have proposed is a reasonable policy experimentation in
Speaker 5: our city of a pilot program of a network of
Speaker 5: five municipals own grocery stores, one in each borough, that
Speaker 5: would respond to twin crises, one of affordability and two
Speaker 5: of food deserts, because, as I was saying earlier, as
Speaker 5: the representative of Queensbridge Houses, I will speak to constituents
Speaker 5: who live in the largest public housing development in North America,
Speaker 5: and they will ask me questions for which I don't
Speaker 5: have the answer, Questions like why are there five fast
Speaker 5: food restaurants in a five block radius? But I cannot
Speaker 5: find a place where I can get fresh produce that
Speaker 5: I can afford. And I hear that time and time again.
Speaker 5: And so what this proposal does is it not only
Speaker 5: guarantees cheaper groceries, but it also guarantees that those groceries
Speaker 5: can be in the very neighborhoods of New Yorkers that
Speaker 5: are being denied that service today.
Speaker 1: So some commentators have described this proposal as somewhat unusual
Speaker 1: in America. I actually don't think it's that unusual. I'm
Speaker 1: a former military brat and I vividly remember commissaries and
Speaker 1: bx's on military bases, and those were subsidized. Anyway, how
Speaker 1: do you, I guess, address the fears of critics who
Speaker 1: worry that this is going to devolve into some sort
Speaker 1: of Soviet style market where maybe I can only buy
Speaker 1: one specific brand of tuna fish versus like the five
Speaker 1: that are currently on offer.
Speaker 5: Well, the beauty of a pilot program is that it
Speaker 5: only expands if it's successful. Now I'm confident that it
Speaker 5: will be successful, and yet we will have to see
Speaker 5: those results themselves. And the reason we even came up
Speaker 5: with this is because of the successes of this model
Speaker 5: in Kansas, as well as what you said in the
Speaker 5: context of military bases across the country. And what we've
Speaker 5: also found is there was a feasibility study done in
Speaker 5: Chicago to see the applicability of this kind of a
Speaker 5: model in an urban setting, and it found it not
Speaker 5: only possible, but urgent and necessary. And that is the
Speaker 5: exact kind of approach we have to take here. And
Speaker 5: I think what's been quite interesting to me is state
Speaker 5: government in the time that I've been there, has had
Speaker 5: a similar recognition, but on a different topic, where it's
Speaker 5: said that gas prices are something that we can only
Speaker 5: allow to get up to a certain point, and when
Speaker 5: they go beyond that, we need to subsidize it to
Speaker 5: ensure that it's affordable. In twenty twenty two, the state
Speaker 5: spent more than six hundred million dollars to suspend portions
Speaker 5: of the gas tax, and yet we are watching as
Speaker 5: New Yorkers are being priced out of bread and milk
Speaker 5: and eggs, and we are saying that this is beyond
Speaker 5: our control. And I think that the last point I
Speaker 5: would make here is that our proposal is one that
Speaker 5: would cost sixty million dollars for all of those five together.
Speaker 5: That is less than half of the money the city
Speaker 5: is already spending on a program called City Fresh, which
Speaker 5: will subsidize corporate supermarkets in the hopes that they provide
Speaker 5: affordable groceries, but with no guarantee to that, and with
Speaker 5: no requirement for them to accept snap or wick, or
Speaker 5: to engage in collective bargaining, or to actually guarantee those
Speaker 5: cheaper groceries. So this is going to save the city
Speaker 5: money while piloting a program that we are confident will
Speaker 5: actually deliver the results that we have been denied in
Speaker 5: that existing program today.
Speaker 3: All right, I have two specifically questions on this. One
Speaker 3: is I understand, and I find intuitively logical, the idea
Speaker 3: that people should be able to afford produce and it's
Speaker 3: food has gotten very expensive at the grocery store. But
Speaker 3: grocery store margins themselves are pretty thin. Yeah, so in
Speaker 3: terms of like actually using the grocery store channel to
Speaker 3: deliver these cost savings, given that the retail stores margins
Speaker 3: are so thin, just three percent, why is that the
Speaker 3: dial rather than I don't know, give people a voucher
Speaker 3: so that they can order fresh direct or something like that.
Speaker 5: You know, I am someone who has been skeptical of
Speaker 5: the efficacy of a voucher based model, and what I
Speaker 5: am proposing with this idea of a network of municipal
Speaker 5: and grocery stores is not a means by which the
Speaker 5: city would make money and be able to increase that
Speaker 5: prosityty is like.
Speaker 3: The grocery level margins seem very thin. Now, I know
Speaker 3: you're not trying to make money. I'm just saying the
Speaker 3: margins seem thin. So if I think, like what moves
Speaker 3: the dial significantly on affordability, the actual retail level grocery
Speaker 3: does not strike me as where the big optional opportunity is.
Speaker 5: I think the opportunity we have with a city run
Speaker 5: model is that we can actually guarantee those cost savings. Right.
Speaker 5: We have heard national chains and executives speak on earning
Speaker 5: calls about how they've been able to blame covid era
Speaker 5: supply chain costs to increase profit margins even further. And
Speaker 5: what this would be as a clear mandate from the
Speaker 5: city that every single dollar we save we pass on.
Speaker 5: But beyond that, given that the mandate is not a
Speaker 5: profit based one, that we can also pass on further
Speaker 5: savings to ensure that things like milk and eggs and
Speaker 5: bread are actually affordable.
Speaker 3: So the other thing, and you sort of anticipated this question,
Speaker 3: which is you mentioned, for example, that in existing Nightscha
Speaker 3: housing people are waiting for a long time to get in,
Speaker 3: elevator repaired, and so forth, how do you ensure operational
Speaker 3: success Because I think people would say, oh, I've seen
Speaker 3: how Nightscha housing works. I guess I'm going to know
Speaker 3: how a city, a New York City run grocery store
Speaker 3: is going to work. And who knows if it's going
Speaker 3: to be open, and who knows if they're gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: keep the refrigerators repaired or if they're going to have
Speaker 3: tomatoes one day. I'm just saying, like you have already
Speaker 3: confirmed the idea that certain city run things are not
Speaker 3: run particularly well. So why should we why should the
Speaker 3: public have confidence that, even setting aside price, that these
Speaker 3: would be like run well, run efficiently.
Speaker 5: I have to earn the public's trust and I will
Speaker 5: do that every single day as the mayor of the city.
Speaker 5: And if you believe in public goods, in public services
Speaker 5: I do, it behooves you to believe in just as
Speaker 5: much in public excellence. And the first charges that you
Speaker 5: must have is to tackle that which has not displayed
Speaker 5: that excellence. I think Nischa is an example of that.
Speaker 5: I also think one of the reasons why I focus
Speaker 5: so much on the MTA in my time in the
Speaker 5: State Assembly has been because that's another example of that
Speaker 5: where we have a world class city and we do
Speaker 5: not have world class public transit. I love our p transit,
Speaker 5: I love our trains, our buses, I love riding a
Speaker 5: city bike, and yet I know that the way in
Speaker 5: which we are running it could be so much better.
Speaker 5: And what has excited me is that we've seen glimpses
Speaker 5: of what that excellence could look like. I mean, I
Speaker 5: remember when I went in to get my vaccine for COVID.
Speaker 5: I was in and out of that facility in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 5: And that to me was an example of the public
Speaker 5: sector being able to match the efficiencies we often hear
Speaker 5: about when we describe the private sector. I think about Nischa,
Speaker 5: which today is a story of disinvestment and of so
Speaker 5: many New Yorkers being left behind. Could also be a
Speaker 5: story closer to the one of how they developed the
Speaker 5: minifridge in this country because it was a direct result
Speaker 5: of an RFP that was put out, or a story
Speaker 5: about yeah, and I think there's also a story today
Speaker 5: to be told about woodside houses, which is a Nischa
Speaker 5: development that is piloting a large scale installation of heat
Speaker 5: pumps that has been shown to both increase the quality
Speaker 5: of life but also decrease the carbon emissions and the cost.
Speaker 5: And ultimately, that is what we need to show New Yorkers.
Speaker 5: We have to earn their trust, and the best way
Speaker 5: to earn their trust is to deliver the results that
Speaker 5: we're confident we can with these ideas.
Speaker 1: Just one more question on the grocery stores. So I
Speaker 1: take the point about their purposes not to make money
Speaker 1: for the government, obviously, but how would you actually judge
Speaker 1: the success of them.
Speaker 5: I would judge the success in their provision of affordable
Speaker 5: groceries I would judge their success in them meeting a
Speaker 5: need that is currently being left unmet. And I think
Speaker 5: that also means in the location of those stores, that
Speaker 5: they actually provide a grocery store in a place where
Speaker 5: currently it is too difficult to find any of that produce,
Speaker 5: and that their prices are as we are discussing them,
Speaker 5: significantly more affordable and more in line with where New
Speaker 5: Yorkers are actually able to spend.
Speaker 3: I want to talk more about public excellence in the
Speaker 3: provision of public goods.
Speaker 5: My Bernard brother, let's do it.
Speaker 3: I am an avid utilizer of many of the public
Speaker 3: goods that New York City provides. They are in public school,
Speaker 3: They go to the park almost every day. We ride
Speaker 3: the bus together, we ride the subway together. I don't
Speaker 3: think the subway and the bus are as bad as
Speaker 3: some people say. It's certainly not as bad as the
Speaker 3: impression I would get if I didn't live here and
Speaker 3: now were watching Fox News about New York City. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: there has been an increase in crime over the last
Speaker 3: several years. I think it's come down and recently, but
Speaker 3: there is a fair amount of disrepair. My impression is
Speaker 3: when I think about public goods in general, which is
Speaker 3: that people on the left really like to talk about
Speaker 3: them and how important they are, and then generally do
Speaker 3: not seem as committed to sort of like product excellence
Speaker 3: as I would expect for them to say, be politically sustainable.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I feel very safe. I live in
Speaker 3: the East Village, I commute up here. I generally feel
Speaker 3: very safe. But you know, like I see needles on
Speaker 3: the playground at Tompkins Square Park, there are bathrooms that
Speaker 3: are almost never open or functional. There's smoking on the
Speaker 3: subway from time to time. It's not the end of
Speaker 3: the world, but it's not very pleasant, especially when you
Speaker 3: have kids. And I'm curious, like what your view is about,
Speaker 3: like what seems to be a sort of tension between
Speaker 3: excellent provision of public goods and some of the law
Speaker 3: and order, as people would call it, requirements for them
Speaker 3: to be clean, friendly, excellent places.
Speaker 5: You know, I think we on the left have to
Speaker 5: make it clear that quality of life is of immense
Speaker 5: concern to us, because when we are fighting for public goods,
Speaker 5: for public service, for public excellence, at the core of
Speaker 5: it is that belief that everyone should have an excellent
Speaker 5: quality of life. And yet What has happened in the
Speaker 5: last few years is that this term has almost been
Speaker 5: made to be understood as if it is solely a
Speaker 5: conservative concern, when in fact, this is at the heart
Speaker 5: of what we're fighting.
Speaker 3: It feels to me, like, to be honest, that the
Speaker 3: left has conceded that that. Actually the part of the
Speaker 3: reason it's become a sort of conservative coded term is
Speaker 3: because I perceive, and tell me if I'm wrong, it's fine,
Speaker 3: but I perceive a certain discomfort about some of the
Speaker 3: hard choices or some of the you know more, maybe
Speaker 3: carcerole is the right word, law and order whatever that
Speaker 3: would contribute to making some of these public goods safer
Speaker 3: and clean.
Speaker 5: Well, I think what we have to make clear is
Speaker 5: that those are not the only choices on offer. And
Speaker 5: yet we do have to still respond to that same crisis.
Speaker 5: And so often, as you were describing living in New
Speaker 5: York City, you have a different understanding than if you
Speaker 5: were to view it through the prism of social media
Speaker 5: or TV. And yet we can say two things at once,
Speaker 5: which is that there is an immense amount of fear
Speaker 5: mongering and that we still have to deliver world class goods,
Speaker 5: which we are far from doing today. And I say
Speaker 5: that as someone who loves our subway system and who
Speaker 5: knows that when you ask New Yorkers where they feel
Speaker 5: least safe in the city, you oftentimes hear those same words,
Speaker 5: it's the subway system. And that's why at the heart
Speaker 5: of our campaign is a proposal to deliver that same
Speaker 5: p public safety that New Yorkers have been denied under
Speaker 5: Eric Adams, a mayor who ran in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: telling those same New Yorkers they need not choose between
Speaker 5: safety and justice. He's shown himself unable to deliver the former,
Speaker 5: uninterested in delivering the latter. And what we've said is
Speaker 5: that we will create a Department of Community Safety, the DCS,
Speaker 5: which understands that police have a critical role to play
Speaker 5: in public safety, and we are currently relying on them
Speaker 5: to respond to almost every single failure of the social
Speaker 5: safety net, asking them to do the work of social
Speaker 5: workers and mental health professionals, a reliance that has made
Speaker 5: it nearly impossible for them to actually do their jobs.
Speaker 5: And we can see that in their inability to raise
Speaker 5: their clearance rates of the major seven categories of crime.
Speaker 5: And so what our DCS will do is tackle five
Speaker 5: key issues homelessness, mental health crisis, gun violence, hate crimes,
Speaker 5: and victim services, and will learn from the evidence proven
Speaker 5: models that have been successful elsewhere in the country in
Speaker 5: responding to these very issues and doing so in America
Speaker 5: that provides public safety and frees up the police.
Speaker 1: So another part of your platform is raising the corporate
Speaker 1: tax rate, raising income tax for millionaires. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things we are all perhaps internalizing this
Speaker 1: week as we watch Washington, DC and the big beautiful
Speaker 1: bill currently going through its process, is that raising taxes
Speaker 1: on the rich seems to be really, really difficult in America.
Speaker 1: Maybe New York is different, maybe New Yorkers feel differently
Speaker 1: about it. But I guess my question is A, why
Speaker 1: do you think it seems so difficult? And then B
Speaker 1: how can you actually overcome that particular.
Speaker 2: Hurdle it just to take on? You actually need state
Speaker 2: permission to do that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: You do. You need to work with the state, and ultimately,
Speaker 5: the city is a creature of the state, and any
Speaker 5: agenda you have as a mayor that seeks to match
Speaker 5: the scale of the crisis New Yorkers are living through
Speaker 5: will require Albany. When we wanted to create universal pre
Speaker 5: k we required Albany. When we wanted congestion pricing, we
Speaker 5: required Albany. And I think again and again and again,
Speaker 5: you will look at any of the most ambitious parts
Speaker 5: of any candidate's plans and it will require Albany. When
Speaker 5: I came into office in twenty twenty one, one of
Speaker 5: the first battles that I helped to lead was to
Speaker 5: raise taxes on the most profitable corporations and the wealthiest
Speaker 5: New Yorkers so that we could fully fund our public schools.
Speaker 5: And we eventually did so over the objections of then
Speaker 5: Governor Cuomo, raising about four billion dollars, and that allowed
Speaker 5: us to fulfill the legal requirement of the Campaign for
Speaker 5: Fiscal Equity, a landmark case with regards to fully funding
Speaker 5: public schools. And I think it's difficult in Washing and
Speaker 5: it's difficult for a number of politicians to raise taxes
Speaker 5: on the rich when those politicians are also funded by
Speaker 5: the rich, because ultimately that clash between the interests of
Speaker 5: their donors and the interest of their constituents is one
Speaker 5: that they will oftentimes pick their donors. And we've seen
Speaker 5: that with Andrew Cuomo. He speaks a big game about
Speaker 5: fighting for working people, but he is funded by the
Speaker 5: same billionaires that fund Donald Trump. We've just seen Bill
Speaker 5: Ackman give his super pac two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: and we continue to see that even with him receiving
Speaker 5: a million dollar donation from DoorDash looking to very clearly
Speaker 5: purchase influence around labor and street safety regulations. And I
Speaker 5: think there is a real possibility of doing so, not
Speaker 5: only because it's one of the most popular things when
Speaker 5: you pull it amongst New Yorkers and amongst Americans, but
Speaker 5: because it's needed to pay for an agenda that will
Speaker 5: transform the quality of life not only for working class
Speaker 5: New Yorkers, not only for middle class New Yorkers, but
Speaker 5: even for the wealthy. You hear this concern about the
Speaker 5: degradation of city services, and our proposal is one that
Speaker 5: meets the earlier conversation we were having about the necessity
Speaker 5: for a public good to be so excellent that even
Speaker 5: the wealthy use it and delivers that with regards to buses,
Speaker 5: with regards to childcare, and with so many of the
Speaker 5: city services that will keep this city running.
Speaker 1: If you're unable to raise the tax rate for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: how much of your policy proposal is not viable any longer,
Speaker 1: and how do you actually prioritize the different things that
Speaker 1: you are proposing.
Speaker 5: So I'm confident in our ability to raise it because
Speaker 5: I've seen in every year that I've been in Albany
Speaker 5: since twenty twenty one, that the legislature has in its
Speaker 5: own budget proposals proposed. Those increases on income taxes for
Speaker 5: the wealthiest New Yorkers and on raising the top corporate
Speaker 5: tax rate. And just for one moment, if I can
Speaker 5: explain what those proposals are. Our proposal is to raise
Speaker 5: the top state corporate tax rate to match that of
Speaker 5: the radical socialist utopia of New Jersey. It's seven point
Speaker 5: twenty five percent here in New York, to match theirs
Speaker 5: of eleven point five five percent. That's a tax that
Speaker 5: applies to the topmost level of profitable corporations. We're talking
Speaker 5: about their profits millions of dollars, and it would raise
Speaker 5: five billion dollars just in doing so. The second part
Speaker 5: of the tax plan, which would raise four billion dollars,
Speaker 5: would be to increase New York City's income tax rate
Speaker 5: on the top one percent of income earners. We're talking
Speaker 5: about people who make a million dollars or more a
Speaker 5: year by a flat two percent increase, so a twenty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars increase, which is what I would argue a
Speaker 5: rounding error when you're looking at it within that larger context.
Speaker 5: Those two things together raise nine billion dollars, and then
Speaker 5: we raise an additional billion through good government reforms, whether
Speaker 5: we're talking about procurement or hiring fiscal auditors, or actually
Speaker 5: collecting the fines and fees that New York City is owed.
Speaker 5: So that's our fiscal policy of how we raise ten billion. Now,
Speaker 5: you always have to prepare for every eventuality. The city
Speaker 5: also has about three billion dollars in its rainy day
Speaker 5: fund and its reserves combined. It also, in times of
Speaker 5: economic growth, as we've generally seen in the last few years,
Speaker 5: sees its budget increase by two to three billion dollars.
Speaker 5: So there are a lot of different opportunities. And the
Speaker 5: final thing I will say is we have a city
Speaker 5: budget of one hundred and fifteen billion dollars. I am
Speaker 5: not confident that Eric Adams has been spending every one
Speaker 5: of those dollars in the most productive way. And one
Speaker 5: of the first things that I will do when I
Speaker 5: get into city Hall, JOJ. But no, I mean to
Speaker 5: be honest with you, it is a regret of mine
Speaker 5: that we have allowed someone like Elon Musk to use
Speaker 5: the language of fraud and inefficiency and waste for his
Speaker 5: own ends of personal benefit, when really, if we care
Speaker 5: about public goods and public service, we should be ensuring
Speaker 5: that it is the most efficient spending of those dollars.
Speaker 5: And I think when we look, especially at the way
Speaker 5: in which we've hollowed out public capacity to instead replace
Speaker 5: it with private consultants, there is an immense amount of
Speaker 5: money to be saved, especially if we're looking specifically at
Speaker 5: the DOE and how much of our reliance on curricula
Speaker 5: procurement has to do more with who we've already been
Speaker 5: procuring with and not having any standardized approach when it
Speaker 5: should also be a universal approach across the department that
Speaker 5: ensures we both save money and deliver excellence.
Speaker 3: I want to ask another politics question. I didn't really
Speaker 3: like to talk policy, but I think this is actually
Speaker 3: an important to mention after the recent general election twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, and it's clear that Democrats performed worse than
Speaker 3: they historically have among non white voters all around the country.
Speaker 3: There's this big debate about why, and the left says
Speaker 3: the centrist you failed to talk to the working class.
Speaker 3: In the centrist it's like, no, it's because you've made
Speaker 3: us talk about pronouns and that repelled.
Speaker 2: People, et cetera. I'm actually not that interested in that
Speaker 2: question right now.
Speaker 3: I'm interested that intra left left candidates actually have not
Speaker 3: done particularly well, mentioned Bernie among poorer voters, among non
Speaker 3: white voters, among polling I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 3: about your own polling per se, but I saw Paul
Speaker 3: that said you were pulling at eight percent among black voters,
Speaker 3: with Andrew Cuomo having.
Speaker 2: Done a lot better.
Speaker 3: Seems like left politics in this country it appeals to
Speaker 3: educated white people, many of them who probably work in newsrooms.
Speaker 3: I haven't pulled the Bloomberg newsroom, but you know, stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Why do you think that is? Why have
Speaker 3: general left candidates, whether it's the primary level, et cetera,
Speaker 3: or even just looking at you know, New York City
Speaker 3: mayoral polling, not had more progress among what is arguably
Speaker 3: the core base of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5: You know, I think these polls that we're speaking about
Speaker 5: right now with regards to New York City continue to
Speaker 5: be polls that are more reflective of name recognition than
Speaker 5: they are of support. And what I mean by that
Speaker 5: is Andrew Cuomo is a former governor who is the
Speaker 5: son of a former governor, and when I speak to
Speaker 5: many New Yorkers who support him, I almost always hear
Speaker 5: the word Mario in their answer. And what I'm proud
Speaker 5: of is that we are the only campaign other than
Speaker 5: Cuomo to have broken double digits with every single ethnic
Speaker 5: group across the city.
Speaker 3: But you know, like even like on say like unionization,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of excitement among utanization of grad students,
Speaker 3: for example, But you know that's not what we think
Speaker 3: of as like, you know, the sort of like industrial
Speaker 3: beating heart of the labor movement, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It does seem to be a phenomenon.
Speaker 3: That's sort of more left culture or sort of left
Speaker 3: economic policies have taken hold more among educated whites.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I think you can look at DC thirty
Speaker 5: seven for an example. This is the largest municipal union
Speaker 5: in our city, and they represent the workers who actually
Speaker 5: keep this city moving. They are by and large black
Speaker 5: and brown New Yorkers, and they explicitly chose not to
Speaker 5: endorse Andrew Cuomo because he created Tier six, a new
Speaker 5: category in the pension program that took more than one
Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars out from working class New yorkers pockets
Speaker 5: and made them retire later after having served this city
Speaker 5: in state for decades. And I was proud to receive
Speaker 5: their endorsement, and I think that it shows me the
Speaker 5: path here is one where every single day over these
Speaker 5: next thirty four days, we are going to continue to
Speaker 5: increase our support where we have seen ourselves, for example,
Speaker 5: just break twenty percent in support with Latino voters. And
Speaker 5: that is indicative of the fact that the very New
Speaker 5: Yorkers who know Cuomo the most are the ones who've
Speaker 5: been failed by his policies the most as well. And
Speaker 5: that is a responsibility for my campaign and every campaign
Speaker 5: to showcase his actual record of cutting Medicaid, stealing money
Speaker 5: from the MTA to fund upstate ski resorts, hounding the
Speaker 5: more than ten women who courageously step forward to accuse
Speaker 5: him of sexual harassment, and in many ways echoing a
Speaker 5: Donald Trump style record. And that's what we will seek
Speaker 5: to do, both at the doors the more than five
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand we've knocked so far, and on
Speaker 5: cable and broadcasts and mailers, because we have now raised
Speaker 5: eight million dollars, the most amount of money we can
Speaker 5: legally spend in this race, faster than any campaign in
Speaker 5: history and podcasts. I guess, yes, this is actually our
Speaker 5: master plan. Yeah, it all comes down to odd lots.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So we're going to cut that cook.
Speaker 1: So I just rem it's something from my dream. Actually.
Speaker 1: So one of the passengers said that what he wanted
Speaker 1: was basically this is not a real passenger, but I
Speaker 1: think it's reflective of some things that you actually do
Speaker 1: here in New York. But he said what he wants
Speaker 1: is basically boring old competency in a mayor so an
Speaker 1: administrator that has lots of policy experience, as opposed to
Speaker 1: someone who's you know, maybe relatively new and trying to
Speaker 1: do some new things. And I think that is important.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a big difference between coming up with
Speaker 1: policy ideas and actually executing them and executing them, Well,
Speaker 1: how are you going to get things done? And what
Speaker 1: do you say to the people who just want, you know,
Speaker 1: like a boring continuation not necessarily of Eric Adams, but
Speaker 1: you know, maybe going back a little bit further.
Speaker 5: I understand that desire. It's a desire for normalcy, and
Speaker 5: in time when politics has become about cronyism and corruption.
Speaker 5: And as much as Andrew Cuomo markets himself as a
Speaker 5: candidate and a campaign of competence, this is a man
Speaker 5: who couldn't even follow basic paperwork requirements to receive millions
Speaker 5: of dollars in public matching funds, someone who couldn't write
Speaker 5: a housing policy without the assistance of chat GBT, or
Speaker 5: even spell the names of its endorsers correctly in his
Speaker 5: own press releases. And as much as a frenetic public
Speaker 5: facing schedule as I've been keeping over the last seven months,
Speaker 5: I've also been keeping a private schedule where I've been
Speaker 5: meeting with deputy mayors and commissioners from a wide variety
Speaker 5: of mayoral administrations to speak about the how of it all.
Speaker 5: Because an idea is only as good as its implementation,
Speaker 5: and ultimately, it comes back from a desire to build
Speaker 5: a team of the best and the brightest, one where
Speaker 5: we have a common thread of excellence, of fluency and
Speaker 5: a track record that binds all of those appointments and
Speaker 5: those hires. Not a common thread of having served together
Speaker 5: for twenty years, which is what it seems to have
Speaker 5: been with Mayor Adams today. And one additional point I'll
Speaker 5: say is that too often the style of leadership we've seen,
Speaker 5: whether it's from Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, has been
Speaker 5: to hire replicas of yourself, to hire people who with
Speaker 5: whom you have one hundred percent agreement and who are
Speaker 5: the quickest to say yes to any one of your ideas,
Speaker 5: be they good or bad. I am not interested in
Speaker 5: that style of leadership. I'm interested in a style of
Speaker 5: leadership that understands that ultimately the buck stops with me,
Speaker 5: and that I have to build a team that speaks
Speaker 5: to a wide breadth of opinion, of ideology and of
Speaker 5: track record, that not everyone is going to look and
Speaker 5: sound and be just like me, and that if I
Speaker 5: want a DOT commissioner, all I need to agree with
Speaker 5: them on is the vision for DOT, not HPD. And
Speaker 5: if I want to hire a deputy mayor, they need
Speaker 5: not agree with me on my thoughts on foreign policy.
Speaker 5: They need only agree with their purview that they're being
Speaker 5: hired for. Because it comes back to this notion that
Speaker 5: I think Mayor Koch put it best, which is, if
Speaker 5: you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues,
Speaker 5: vote for me. If you agree with me on twelve
Speaker 5: out of twelve, see a psychiatrist. And that speaks to
Speaker 5: the need to have room for that disagreement and ultimately
Speaker 5: be bound by that pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 3: During the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, it was a Trump
Speaker 3: supporter I'm looking up. It was actually the founder of
Speaker 3: Latinos for Trump who said that if Trump didn't win,
Speaker 3: there would be taco trucks on every corner, which sounds
Speaker 3: really good to me.
Speaker 2: You have also proposed.
Speaker 3: Neoliberalism for halal cards, which I really like chicken over rice,
Speaker 3: so I'd be very happy to see more of them
Speaker 3: and be cheaper. But I'm curious how far you'd extend.
Speaker 3: So reduce the permits make it easier to open a
Speaker 3: Increase the permits, yes, oh, increase the number of permits
Speaker 3: make it easier, therefore to get.
Speaker 1: It is true that the halal guys in Midtown, I
Speaker 1: think the original one. You go by there in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and the line stretches around the block. We've kind
Speaker 1: of insane.
Speaker 5: They used to say, a chicken in every pot. I'm
Speaker 5: saying a helal in every hand.
Speaker 3: Okay, what about hotels? Their hotel prices are insanely expensive.
Speaker 3: Airbnb is no longer legal. I know someone visiting the
Speaker 3: city right now who had to get a place in
Speaker 3: Jersey City because it's just too crazy. In New York,
Speaker 3: it's insanely difficult to build a new hotel, apparently due
Speaker 3: to opposition both from existing hotel owners to new hotels
Speaker 3: for reasons and the hotel worker unions. Do you support
Speaker 3: liberal in the same way that we need more wolog cards?
Speaker 3: Would you support liberalization of hotel development in New York City?
Speaker 5: Now, I am not as interested in the concerns of
Speaker 5: existing hotel owners, but I am very interested in the
Speaker 5: concerns of hotel workers, and I think that that is
Speaker 5: something that I would love to explore. Is there a
Speaker 5: way to expand the number of hotels while ensuring that
Speaker 5: we also retain the protections for those workers, because so
Speaker 5: often we've seen this very fight, and it's going to
Speaker 5: be one that will intensify in the next year as
Speaker 5: there's contract renegotiations coming to a head during the World Cup,
Speaker 5: where hotel owners have put hotel workers on the front
Speaker 5: lines of so much of the work without giving them
Speaker 5: the pay that is requisite for that. With Airbnb, one
Speaker 5: of my concerns has been the transformation of what would
Speaker 5: be housing into effectively small scale hotels and the proposal
Speaker 5: that they're pushing. I think they've currently they're putting I
Speaker 5: think more than a million dollars into spending on local races.
Speaker 5: Has the prospect of turning a double digit number of
Speaker 5: one and two family homes, taking them off of the
Speaker 5: market and making them these vacant units.
Speaker 3: I'd just say Tracy is someone who has lived in
Speaker 3: multi family housing my entire life in New York City.
Speaker 3: I'm not thrilled with Airbnb because I like to know
Speaker 3: who the neighbors are in my building and sometimes you
Speaker 3: get loud, noisy, crazy people.
Speaker 2: Anyway, keep going here.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's a concern that a lot of
Speaker 1: people would share. I have just one more question. It's
Speaker 1: the most important one. But you have a little experience
Speaker 1: in Bollywood. I suppose I'm a big Bollywood fan. Everything
Speaker 1: I look I know about cricket I learned from Lagan.
Speaker 5: Which is great film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great film. Okay, So here's my question. Amer Khan
Speaker 1: or Shower Khan, who one.
Speaker 5: Wow, Why why would you do this to me? Amir
Speaker 5: Khan for my head, chau Khan for my.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1: I think I would say a similar thing.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, why didn't we spend the interview on
Speaker 6: these questions.
Speaker 2: Do a Bollywood episode?
Speaker 5: I would love to do a Bollywood episode.
Speaker 2: Wait for those who don't know, what is the Bollywood.
Speaker 5: So the body connection is that my mother, her name
Speaker 5: is Mira, and I are. She is a filmmaker. She
Speaker 5: is an Indian filmmaker who's made a number of films,
Speaker 5: my favorite of which is Mississippi Massala and I actually haven't.
Speaker 1: Seen that one. I saw Monsoon Wedding and that was great.
Speaker 6: Great film, great film.
Speaker 5: You have to see Missip Massala because it's also the
Speaker 5: reason that I'm alive. She met my father while researching
Speaker 5: for that film.
Speaker 3: Huh sore and Mom, Donnie, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on the thrill that we could.
Speaker 2: Make it happen.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, the pleasure to be here, Tracy.
Speaker 2: If he wins, maybe he'll come back on.
Speaker 3: We can do a Bollywood Well we have, we'd have
Speaker 3: a lot of other stuff to talk about. But I
Speaker 3: would definitely, I would definitely. I don't know much about it.
Speaker 3: I love Legan, so we should talk more about that sometimes.
Speaker 1: I really love Bollywood movies. I need to catch Mississippi Massala.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, I mean Moms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was obviously a very interesting conversation. I
Speaker 1: do think, you know, there's this sort of knee jerk
Speaker 1: reaction against socialism in America for you know, reasons.
Speaker 2: Or reasons reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, examples of some of the stuff
Speaker 1: do exist, and I think the bx's and the military
Speaker 1: commissaries are a really good example of, you know, we
Speaker 1: do have subsidized groceries that exist in America, and why
Speaker 1: not have them in New York.
Speaker 3: I think a really key thing, which is there's this
Speaker 3: bad cycle with the public provision of goods in the US,
Speaker 3: which is just that people look at them and don't
Speaker 3: think they're particularly well run, and then it's like and
Speaker 3: now you want to have more, and so it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, like I said, I love the New York
Speaker 3: City subway. I take it every day. What I want
Speaker 3: a grocery store that sort of resembles the New York
Speaker 3: City subway, Probably not, I'm not saying it would. But
Speaker 3: I'm saying this is my experience interfacing with New York
Speaker 3: City public goods when I want a grocery store that
Speaker 3: like resembles the bathrooms at Tompkins Square Park or has
Speaker 3: similar No, not not at all. I mean so I
Speaker 3: just feel like, like it's fine. I love living in
Speaker 3: New York City. I think these public provisions are great,
Speaker 3: and some of them are absolutely incredible, like the libraries.
Speaker 3: But by and large, I think that the tenders of
Speaker 3: public goods, for various reasons, have not done a great
Speaker 3: job of Like, no, these are actually really good services.
Speaker 1: That's fair, And obviously the government's core competency is probably
Speaker 1: not running grocery stores right like they wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't n't.
Speaker 1: They would have to learn a lot in order to
Speaker 1: get up to speed. But my point is, you know,
Speaker 1: the commissaries at military bases, they're pretty good, like you
Speaker 1: can buy everything and service is great. They still bag
Speaker 1: your groceries at least the last time I was there,
Speaker 1: So examples do exist. All I'm saying is it's possible.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: You know the other thing, and obviously we only had
Speaker 3: so much time. Is I'm really interested further in this
Speaker 3: tension between deregulation is good when it's small things like
Speaker 3: a log cart or Zorn recently didn't add which we
Speaker 3: didn't get around to talking about, how like, you know,
Speaker 3: there should be make it easier for bodega owners and
Speaker 3: you know, less regulations for them, which sounds great.
Speaker 2: I like, I like all of my like.
Speaker 3: The three local bodegas within a forty five second walk
Speaker 3: from my apartment is great. But why do those sort
Speaker 3: of basic principles of sort of liberalizing the rules around
Speaker 3: X not then apply to some of the bigger things
Speaker 3: such as hotels which are insanely expensive in New York
Speaker 3: or other areas like real estate.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 3: He did mention allowing more single family stairs, so they're
Speaker 3: all the single family stare nerds on Twitter. Well, I'm
Speaker 3: sure be very excited about that also, which we talked
Speaker 3: about episode once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, we did. Yeah, all right, So this
Speaker 1: is actually a.
Speaker 2: Core It is a core Odd Lots episode.
Speaker 1: Okay, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 3: I'm Joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow our guest zoron Mumdannie. He's at zoron k Mumdanie.
Speaker 3: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Speaker 3: Bennett at Dashbot at Caleebrooks at Calebrooks. From our Oddlaws content,
Speaker 3: go to Bloomberg dot com slash od Lots, where we
Speaker 3: have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and
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Speaker 1: And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
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